Seamaisíona Reamonn’s journey from budding musician to well-rounded introspective artist began with instrumental exploration and a love for writing. This fusion of the musical and literary worlds produces light-as-air soundscapes, serenaded by an expressive purge of raw emotion. “Tending to the Mirage,” eloquently captures the way in which electronics can be used as a powerful vessel to transport this sense of self-expression- to us as listeners- by underscoring that music is a universal language to all. With her signature folk style of writing, Reamonn constructs songs by writing the chords first to get the composition down then creates lyrics that parallel these chord progressions. Personal disclosures manifest as reflections in nature by mirroring the way in which the human experience is indisputably interwoven with the natural and spiritual worlds.
We craved more so Boston Hassle reached out to Reamonn to get a deeper look inside the artist behind the mirage:
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HASSLE: What are the most critical elements of your musical style?
REAMONN: I try to create empty spaces for listeners to fill with their own emotions, thoughts, ideas, etc. I try to make it atmospheric in many ways I suppose. I want to create a feeling of infinite space where the listener feels like they are floating in some unknown void or cavern. That is really important to me although I definitely do not create that intentionally, it kind of just happens.
HASSLE: What was your inspiration behind, “Tending to the Mirage?”
REAMONN: At the time when I was recording “Tending to the Mirage” I was living in Arroyo Seco, New Mexico with a previous partner. I think a lot of the influence for the album came out of the strange carousel of stillness and quiet that exists within the high deserts of New Mexico. When you’re living in it and breathing it in every day your head feels a little weird. I found myself questioning everything around me a lot and the validity of its existence at a pretty constant rate because some of the things I witnessed there from the other worldly sunsets to the mountains turning completely pink at sunset seemed so unreal. It is really a place where you feel like your skeleton is stretching out across dry landscapes and you realize how thin and temporary your existence really is in relation to its surroundings. These aren’t things that I necessarily wasn’t aware of before moving there but these ideas were just exemplified so much while living in the high deserts. Life and death and the instability of that duality is so present there and staying alive in that climate is of utmost importance or else the desert will gladly take your bones and the water within them to feed on. I think it is with these elements that made it really easy for me to question the line between reality and imagination more than ever before. Life is a hazy window of strange moments disappearing and appearing again in cycles and circles and I just want to be able to capture it somehow and that’s how “Tending to the Mirage” came about.
HASSLE: How has your style evolved since the release of, “Westward to the Sunrise?”
REAMONN: Since the release of that album I’ve definitely become a lot more comfortable with electronics, recording, and I would say that I am a better songwriter now as well. I have definitely been moving into fuller sounds for compositions and I can hear more where there is needed instrumentals in empty spaces. That album is very sparse, I recorded it with only a small USB mic and my classical guitar but I think that suited me at the time and it also was best for it being pressed onto tapes as well.
HASSLE: Natural imagery is an omnipresent force throughout all of your work. What parallels between the natural, emotional, and spiritual worlds do you find are the most important to you?
REAMONN: I think that the three are in combination at a very constant rate within the human experience. I’ve traveled quite a bit and I think my reasoning behind it is that I am always wanting to see how the human spirit can stretch across landscapes and how you can always find some metaphor, feeling, or spirit lurking that attaches itself to your present experience. There is a present empathetic conversation between human beings and nature and I think you have to be quiet and still enough to hear what it has to say or else you will miss some very important messages for your own existence. My decision to move out to New Mexico actually came about because I was walking in the woods and when my previous partner and I talked about moving there, an owl flew up into a tree from the ground. I saw that as a strange spiritual moment that I couldn’t neglect and I am so glad I didn’t.
In nature you can find all of the feelings that exist within the human experience: loneliness, anger, sadness, grief, emptiness, happiness, elation, etc. I think as an artist I am always trying to capture these feelings and moments and find a way to convey their messages through my own spiritual experience. I would say in my art I feel a very deep connection with wind specifically; the way it carries sound and dust from previous places and shapes the landscape. It is a huge metaphor for the passing of time and the human experience. It howls in deep and long breaths and is completely intangible within the space of time and I find it really inspiring to my way of living. I really long to move that way within the world and to be able to spread myself across everything I see in space and time and then be rebirthed and move another way when the timing comes while still holding onto the things I touched previously.
HASSLE: Has music uncovered elements of yourself that may have been hidden deep beneath the surface?
REAMONN: I think music has the ability to do that to just about anyone. It’s a really powerful medium for uncovering secrets or feelings that are suppressed and I think you don’t even have to be a musician for it to have that effect. Just by listening you can uncover the deepest feelings and caverns within yourself. It’s truly a universal language that strikes this very raw part of the human core. I think a lot about how the human body is made of rhythm from your blood moving through your veins to bodily movement to the pace of thoughts, we’re all made of strange rhythmic stardust. So in that way, we’re all musicians to some degree.
But for me, I think it definitely uncovers a part of myself that I do try to keep hidden from most people or at least keep under wraps. Music is a very healing space for me in so many ways and I always think of making music as a part of my spiritual practice first and foremost. I definitely have a lot of hidden caverns of thoughts, feelings, and ideas that I mostly keep to myself (or try to!) and I think music becomes the way that I can convey those messages from those places. I am actually a very light and easygoing person to most people at first sight and glance but then my music is kind of the opposite of that. It’s pretty funny to me actually but I think it goes along with the universal idea of duality that exists everywhere. Light and dark are really powerful forces within existence, I think we are all creatures made up of those two elements and I think music definitely is a way for me to uncover the dark inside of my personal universe.
HASSLE: Any future projects or collaborations?
REAMONN: Right now I am working on a folk album that I likely will not release until sometime next year. I am still giving myself the time and space for new songs to bubble up and create themselves. I don’t have any plans for collaborations even though I would totally love to collaborate with so many artists but for now, I am just working on this folk album.
